Jingle Bell Rock
by Space Cowgirl
Summary: It's the most wonderful time of the year, and the Bebop's crew is celebrating by going after a very special bounty... (Now COMPLETE with epilogue.)
1. Merry Freakin' Christmas

Disclaimer:  No.  

_Author's note_: I wrote a Christmas story.  Be afraid.  This is sort of a prequel to a series I'm planning to write called 'Cowboy Bebop: The Lost Sessions' (I know it's been done before, but hey.)  Please let me know if you'd be interested in reading it, alrighty?

_Spoilers_: None.

_Archiving_:  Take my fanfic!  Please!  But seriously, folks…  (Please email me at jediprincess84@hotmail.com and let me know where it's goin'.)

_Rating_: PG-13 for shooting, cussing and Santa-bashing.  

_Feedback_: Yes.  Leave me feedback or I will come to your house and chop up your loved ones.  I know where allllllllllll of you live.  I do!

_Other stuff_: The song _Jingle Bell Rock _was written by Billy Gilman and as far as I know belongs to him.

COWBOY BEBOP: THE LOST SESSIONS 

****

**_Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock_**

**_Jingle bells ring and jingle bells swing_**

**_Snowing and blowing up bushels of fun_**

**_Now the jingle hop has begun_**

            Jet Black stared at his bonsai trees with disbelief, verging on horror.  It couldn't be.  Who would _do_ such an inhuman thing?  He'd seen a lot of sick shit go down in his time, but this…this was beyond all of it.  Jet opened his mouth and let out a roar.  

            _"ED!"_  A moment later her small red head peeked around the corner of Jet's room.  

            "Yes Jet-person?"  Her eyes were wide and innocent.  Jet felt himself soften and resolved not to be easy on her this time.  What she had done was beyond forgiveness.  

            "Ed," said Jet in a low, dangerous voice.  "What did I tell you about going into my room?"

            "That this is Jet's private sanctum and it must never under any circumstances be violated," said Ed in an eerie mimic of his own voice.  

            "That's right," said Jet evenly.  "So, Ed, if you remember what I told you…"  He turned and made a sweeping gesture at his trees, all of which were adorned with shiny balls, tinsel and small blinking lights, "then how do you explain all _THIS?!"_  Ed winced at his shout.

            "Edward wants to make the _Bebop_ pretty!"  Jet sighed and tried to remind himself that she was just a kid.  A psychotic, hyperactive, borderline insane kid, but still a kid.  

            "Why, Ed?  I thought you liked it the way it was."

            "Yes yes yes yes yes," said Ed impatiently.  "But now it needs something!"

            "_Why?_" demanded Jet.

            "Because it's the most wonderful time of the year!" Ed screeched before cartwheeling off down the corridor.  Jet groaned and checked the small calendar hanging on the inside of his door.  Sure enough, Ed was right.  Jet had the sudden feeling his life had just gotten a whole new dimension of annoyances in his life.  

SESSION #0 JINGLE BELL ROCK 

            "So who's the bounty head?" said Faye, hanging herself over Spike's shoulder like an unwelcome stole.  Spike put his palm over her face and pushed her off. 

            "Ask before you look."  

            "Let her see," said Jet.  "We can use her on this one."  Faye, vindicated, pushed Spike out of her way and pressed her nose to the screen.  She sat back and frowned.

            "Funny, guys."  Spike pulled himself back on to the couch.

            "What?  You have something against pulling in con artists?"

            "This 'con artist' is a little kid!" Faye shouted at him, spinning the screen around to give Spike the full view of the small, thin face in the center.  The face did indeed appear to be a child, complete with limpid brown eyes and wispy brunette bangs.  

            Jet began to snicker, and was soon joined by Spike.  "What?!" demanded Faye.  Jet stopped laughed long enough to shake his head.  

            "You know, Faye, for a sharp hustler you sure are easy to fool."  He set the screen back to its right angel.  "His name is Timothy Tan, but his alias is Tiny Tim."  He chuckled again.  "He's thirty-four years old, but he has a rare genetic defect that makes him appear to be around ten or eleven."  Faye's mouth dropped open.

            "He's a midget?"

            "She's not only beautiful, she's sensitive too," observed Spike.

            "Bite me," said Faye.  "So what's his game?"

            "He specializes in burglary, with a little low-level fraud on the side if he can get away with it," said Jet.  "His MO is to pose as a kid, usually a homeless one, sometimes in a wheelchair, and get in with some rich, childless couple."

            "Then he cleans out their house and their bank account and takes off for a new planet and a new set of suckers," finished Spike.  Faye bit her lip.  

            "So how do we find him?"  

            "Not gonna be easy," said Jet.  "He's good at disappearing, and his…talent makes it easy for him to do it.  But we have an angle."  Spike snorted.

            "What?" said Faye.  

            "Nothing," said Spike innocently.  Faye looked suspiciously at Jet.

            "What?" she demanded.  

            "We're going at this two ways," said Jet.  "Number one is a lead we have on Ganymeade…Tan's younger sister, Margaret."

            "She's helping us out for a cut of the bounty," added Spike.  

            "And?" said Faye, knowing somehow she wasn't going to like the second part of the plan.

            "And you and I are going to pose as a married couple and hit the likely spots on Ganymeade," said Jet.  Faye's mouth dropped open.

            "You…are…joking," she choked out.

            "Nope," said Spike with his insufferably smug smile.  

            "I'm not doing it!" Faye shouted.

            "The bounty is 200 million woolong," said Jet.  "A lot of rich people want this guy.  Take your cut or leave it."  Faye fumed silently for a second and then slumped her shoulders.

            "Fine.  Fine, you win.  What's our cover story?"

            "You're Jet's young wife with her ticking biological clock bit," said Spike, snapping his fingers a lot like Marisa Tomei in _My Cousin Vinny_.  Faye wouldn't admit she'd ever actually watched _My Cousin Vinny_, but Spike and Marisa bore a certain resemblance.  "And Jet is your rich-as-dirt sugar daddy who can't get it up."  Jet turned red from his beard to his hairline…which was to say his whole head started to resemble a large tomato.  

            "That was _not_ what we came up with, _Spike_."  Spike shrugged with an evil grin.  

            "And who are you in this little family drama?" asked Faye

            "Me?" said Spike, still grinning.  "I'm the skeleton in your closet."     


	2. Joy To the World

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 

**_Soon the bells will start_**

**_And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing_**

**_Right within your heart_**

****

            Snow was gently falling over Ganymeade as the _Bebop _cruised in for a landing.  Faye was slouched in the lounge wearing slacks and a large, gaudy sweater consisting of embroidered Santas and springs of holly with realistic 3-D berries made of poof balls.

            "Nice look for you," commented Spike as he put a fresh clip into his pistol.  Faye flipped him off with both hands.  She looked absolutely miserable.  

            "Playtime's over, kiddies," announced Jet as he came from the cockpit.  "Faye and I will head to the last place Tan was spotted when he worked Ganymeade, and Spike can go dig up the Margaret broad."  

            Faye's sensible black pump missed his head by millimeters.  Jet ducked reflexively and then stood up and bellowed.  "What the hell was that for?!"  

            "Look at you!" Faye screamed.  "What are you wearing?!"  Jet looked at himself.

            "My clothes, Faye."  

            "Oh sure!" she shouted, her pitch rising with every word.  "I'm sure all impotent banker husbands go around in jack boots, pink tshirts and an ISSP jumpsuit with god knows what splattered all over the front!"  

            "Can we leave the impotence thing out of this?!  Jesus!" said Jet.  Spike was edging towards the cabin door.  

            "It works for most things you do normally, Jet," he said.  "But it doesn't exactly scream Frustrated Man With a Desk Job."

            "I was PLANNING TO CHANGE!" Jet shouted at such a volume Faye covered her ears and ducked behind the TV.  "I swear to God above, you people will drive me right over the fucking falls one of these days."  He turned on his heel and strode into his room.

            "Well he's certainly touchy," observed Faye.  Spike wondered if she knew how dense she sounded and decided she couldn't possibly.

            "I'm off to meet Tan's loving sister," he said, opening the hatch. Cold wind rushed in, coupled with the sound of tinny canned holiday music.  Perry Como at his finest.  The _Bebop_ was parked near a shopping district.  Spike winced as he stepped into the cold and audial assault, and had the feeling he was going to be wishing for death before this job was over.  

            Margaret Tan lived in a small apartment a mile's walk from the ship.  It was a concrete box surrounded by other boxes, with fluorescent lights in the halls.  Spike found himself immediately depressed.  He could hear babies crying and dogs barking from behind closed doors, which reminded him of how much he hated kids and dogs, which wound up depressing him even more.  Margaret's apartment was at the end of the hall, near a narrow casement window that looked out over the downtown skyscrapers.  A lot of them were adorned with lights, one had colored its windows to look like a giant Christmas tree.  It was a shiny, happy mirage of good cheer.  

            Spike wanted to shoot himself from the wonderfulness of it all.

            Faye had to admit Jet didn't look half bad once he got himself into character and into his three-piece suit.  He had on slick shades to cover his cybernetic face implant, and with his scarf, suit jacket and overcoat looked like the very epitome of a rich asshole compensating for a personal shortcoming with his material things.  

            It still didn't come close to making up for the fact that Faye was wearing a Santa sweater with poof balls.  And that she was pretending to be married to Jet.  And that they were in a mall.  

            Not just any mall, either.  This was the Ganymeade Retail Complex—five stories, four million square feet and over a thousand shops of capitalist goodness.  Bright, twinkling lights entwined with evergreen garlands were everywhere.  Christmas music piped over the main speakers mingled with the tunes coming from shops and the chatter of hundreds of thousands of last-minute holiday shoppers who were heeding the warnings posted everywhere that there were only **FIVE SHOPPING DAYS LEFT UNTIL CHRISTMAS**.  All in all, it was the most spectacular sensory overload Faye had ever experienced. 

            "How the hell do these people stand it?" she shouted at Jet over the incredible din.  Jet just shook his head.

            "Beats me."  Faye looked at the people swirling around them.  Families, couples, singles.  They all had a glazed look like cattle who had been prodded one too many times.  

            "This is disgusting," Faye decided out loud.  "In fact, it's one of the worst things I've ever seen."  Somewhere ahead of them, a kid began to scream.  Several others took up the cry and soon they had a chain reaction of howling babies spreading from the epicenter.  

            "Tan picked up his last Ganymeade marks down at the end of this corridor," said Jet, shoving aside a fat man loaded down with bags from some place called The Yarn Barn.  

            "And what makes you think he'll be stupid enough to go back?" asked Faye.  "Face it, Jet, this was a lousy idea.  The kid likes rich couples, so at this time of year he'll be on Mars, or _some_place where the richie-riches will take pity on him.  He wouldn't come to this hellhole."

            "You mean you wouldn't," said Jet.  "Tan isn't as oblivious to human behavior as you are, Faye."

            "Excuse me—" Faye started.

            "Oh, when it comes to a cheat or a grift or a card game you have no equal," Jet assured her.  "It's dealing with normal people that you're a little substandard at."  He swept his arm and nearly took the heads off several shorter shoppers.  "These people, Faye, are full of the holiday spirit.  Here like nowhere else.  On Earth you have to worry that a meteor will crash through your roof and crush Great Aunt Edna while she's eating her Christmas turkey, and on a place like Mars…" he stopped, because he knew Faye would get it.

            "People just don't give enough of a shit," she finished.  

            "But here," said Jet, "here on happy Ganymeade the climate is just right for someone like Tan.  Cold, frosty and full of suckers.  Because this unencumbered Holiday Spirit turns you into a dumb fucking ass."  Faye had to concede that the impotent banker cum bounty hunter had a point.  

            "Alright," she said.  "So let's nail his dwarven butt and buy ourselves some Christmas cheer."  

            Spike almost didn't knock on Margaret Tan's door.  He found himself thinking it wasn't worth it.  A smart con like Tan wouldn't be this easily caught.  And that his sister was willing to give him up for cash just reeked of something non-kosher.  But he did knock, hoping she wouldn't be home, or she had moved and all he'd have to deal with was a pissed-off fat guy named Earl.  

            "Yes?" she said as she opened the door.  "You Spike Spiegel, the bounty hunter?" 

            Spike tried to reply but found himself at a loss for words.  The only one he could choke out usually sounded choked coming from him.  Margaret Tan didn't seem to care, she just cocked her head slightly to the left in a gesture that was achingly familiar as Spike exhaled his single-word sentence.

            "Julia…"     


	3. God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman

_He sees you when you're sleeping_  
**_He knows when you're awake _**  
_He knows when you've been bad or good_  
_So be good for goodness sake_

            After a moment when he couldn't breath, Spike realized it wasn't Julia.  This girl was shorter, and thinner.  She had brown eyes instead of blue, and they held the same slightly exotic tilt as Timothy Tan's.  But God, the resemblance was uncanny.  

            "Sorry," said Spike to Margaret Tan, while his mind still screamed _Julia!_  

            "No problem…" said Margaret, now regarding him as if he was a little off center.  Which he was, Spike was the first to admit.  "You Spike?"

            "Yeah."

            "I'm Margaret Tan."

            "I figured."  

            "And on the note of that somewhat Bogart-esque exchange," said Margaret with a sarcastic smirk.  "Would you like to come in?"  Spike pinched the bridge of his nose once and then nodded. 

            "Yeah."

            Inside Margaret's apartment was not any more cheerful than the fluorescent hallway.  There were no holiday decorations, and the whole place was dark from the pulled blinds.  

            "Sorry for the lack of seasonal cheer," said Margaret.  "But that stuff drives me up the wall."  

            "No problem," said Spike.  "I'm not a big fan of Christmas myself."  Margaret threw a glance at him as she settled herself in an armchair made of an indeterminate beige material.  Spike realized all the furniture he was seeing must have come with the apartment.  It was too ugly for anyone to actually purchase.  

            "So you're here about my brother," Margaret stated.  Spike nodded.

            "Mind if I smoke?"  

            "No," said Margaret.  Spike lit up and exhaled towards the stained ceiling.  One of the stains kind of looked like the Swordfish, and he found himself wishing he was in it, going somewhere else.  "I suppose you're wondering why I contacted you guys," said Margaret.  Spike shrugged.

            "I don't ask a lot of questions about anyone.  I don't feel I have the right."

            "Well, I found out there was a bounty on Tim and I ran a search on you people.  Bounty hunters.  Some of you actually have Web sites, did you know that?"  Spike didn't, but it figured, so he nodded.  "Anyway," said Margaret, "you guys popped up a lot.  You don't have a lot of captures, and you don't even usually pull in the big money, but all your crooks were…well…special.  They were the odd ones, the ones nobody else could get to.  Like those sea rat activist people.  And the guy who robbed the gates."

            "We didn't actually bring him in," said Spike.  "In point of fact, we never told anyone about him.  How did you know?"

            "You bounty hunters are a gossipy bunch," said Margaret.  "So, in spite of your dubious record of destroying pretty much everything you come into contact with on a job…"

            "Hey," Spike protested.  

            "A church on Mars, a score of ships, casino guards, ISSP agents, the list goes on," said Margaret.  "Shall I continue?"  Spike glowered at her over his cigarette.

            "If you're so worried about us blowing shit up then why pick on us?"

            "Because you're the only ones who can catch my brother," said Margaret.  "He's too smart for the other lunkheads.  But you people are just weirdo enough yourselves to pull him in."  Spike ignored the fact that he had been called a weirdo and asked what had been on his mind since the beginning.

            "Why do you want your brother caught?"

            "Because he's dangerous," said Margaret matter-of-factly.  "When we were children he was downright cruel—I won't go into details, but suffice to say that pulling these cons will only satisfy him for so long.  I follow his news-making stunts, Mr. Spiegel.  The last couple he conned had another kid.  A thirteen-year-old son."  She fixed Spike with her enormous eyes.  "He beat the boy almost to death getting away."

            "Another kid…that's not his MO," said Spike.  

            "His MO is changing, then," said Margaret shortly.  "I know my brother, Mr. Spiegel.  He's almost devilishly smart, but he has a mean streak that the intelligence can only suppress for so long.  I don't want to see anyone hurt."  To Spike, it sounded like a hollow reason at best and more like a soap opera monologue, but like he said, it wasn't his right to ask questions.  Not yet, anyway.

            "Okay," he said.  "So for ten percent of the bounty, what do you have to offer us?"

            "His fence on Ganymeade is an Earth expatriate, a German named Hans Claus.  His alias is…"

            "Don't tell me," said Spike, fighting a groan.  "'Santa' Claus."  Margaret nodded.

            "Once my brother makes a score he'll go to Hans to unload the booty."

            "And you know this how?" said Spike, deciding he was permitted one question.  Margaret stood and walked past him to the door.  Spike breathed in.  She smelled so much like her…exactly like her…

            "I just do," said Margaret as she opened the door.  "If you need more information, Mr. Spiegel, feel free to drop by.  Otherwise I'll expect you with a check when you catch him."  Spike stopped impulsively as he was leaving and turned to her.

            "Have you ever been to Mars?" 

            "No," said Margaret.  Somewhere down the hall the barking dog began to howl.  Spike suddenly felt heavy, as if he were walking through deep mud and had been for days.  "Why?" asked Margaret.

            "No reason," said Spike as he ground his cigarette into the gravy-brown carpet of the hallway and walked away.  "Merry Christmas."  

            "We've been at this mall for five fucking hours," said Faye slowly and succinctly.  "And if I have to hear 'Silver Bells' piped through these damn speakers one more time I am going to lose it and start gunning down happy holiday shoppers."  Jet, who was sitting on a bench next to her, admitted that he was starting to feel the same way.  They'd been observing the corner where Tiny Tim had last worked on Ganymeade for nearly that long, and a variety of homeless men, women and children had shown up.  He'd seen men with no legs, children competing for who could look the most pathetic and women with flocks of even more pathetic-looking kids.  All in all, the sight was depressing him greatly.  

            _That ungrateful little bastard better show_ was his latest and most venomous thought.  

            "He's not gonna show," said Faye.  "This whole thing was a waste of time.  I can't believe I actually let you two talk me into it."

            "Faye," said Jet wearily and with great patience.  "Shut.  Up."  Faye opened her mouth and Jet was sure she said something biting and sarcastic in retort, but his comm rang and he was thankfully saved.

            "It's me," said Spike.  

            "What'd you get from the sister?" asked Jet.  

            "Not much," said Spike.  Jet, in a eerie sort of _Twilight Zone_ experience, could hear the tinny 'Silver Bells' coming from Spike's end of the call as well as his.  It creeped him out.  

            "Well, what is not much?" he snapped.  Spike sighed, and Jet knew he was probably leaning against the Swordfish smoking and basking in his cool.  He sure as hell wasn't in a mall in a sweaty Impotent Banker suit surrounded by salespeople with test spritzers and trays of sample Christmas meat.  Jet began to hate Spike.  

            "Apparently Tan goes to a fence named Hans 'Santa' Claus after a score," said Spike.  "I'm gonna go check him out."  

            "Santa Claus?!" exclaimed Jet, causing Faye and several passing shoppers to look at him.  One little girl approached.

            "Are you talking to Santa?"

            "No kiddin', he's still in business?" Jet asked Spike.  

            "Apparently," said Spike.  Jet laughed.

            "Well damn!  I was sure someone would've shot that fat bastard by now."  The little girl's face crumpled like tissue and she began to sob.  Her mother hurried her away, while telling Jet he should be ashamed.  "Be careful," said Jet, totally oblivious to the child he had just scarred for life.  "Claus ain't no jolly old Saint Nick."

            "No, I don't suppose he would be," said Spike dryly.  "I'm out.  How's the mall angle holding up?"  

            "Would you like to taste our delicious Homestyle Christmas Seasoning sausage?!" chirped a perky salesgirl, shoving a platter under Jet's nose.  Jet sighed.

            "Don't ask."

            "Alright," said Spike, and hung up.  

            "Is it free?" Faye was asking the girl.  

            "Yes ma'am, and if you buy ten or more link meat products it's ten percent off!" said the girl.  Faye swept half of the sausage pieces into her hand and shoved them into her mouth.  Jet felt like he was going to be sick, and the salesgirl looked amazed that anyone, never mind someone as skinny as Faye, could stomach that much Homestyle Christmas Seasoning at once.  

            "Oh come on!" said Faye when she saw Jet looking.  "It's free food!"  

            "That," said Jet, pointing at the platter.  "Is cayenne pepper and pig innards.  It is not food."  Faye flipped a hand and turned away from him, only to freeze and choke.  

            "See?" said Jet.  Faye swallowed rapidly and swatted Jet.  

            "No!  Over there!"  She extended her finger dramatically.  "It's Tan!"  Jet followed her pointing, and sure enough, there was the little waif riding in an old model push wheelchair and sporting a ratty overcoat about six sizes too big and a watch cap.  Jet forgot about how miserable he was and sized up Tiny Tim.  He had his hand out in a supplicating gesture and people were dropping money into it.  A lot of people.  Almost everyone who passed.  Jet was amazed, and then tried to look at Tan as if he were a normal middle-class shopper.  Jesus.  The guy looked like a kid to cute and helpless for words.  

            "That is just sick," said Faye, giving voice to Jet's thoughts.  "I mean, it's one thing to con people legitimately, but trading on your looks like that…"

            "Don't go any further with that thought or you'll wind up looking stupid," Jet warned her.  She glared, but turned her attention back to Tan.  His pockets were already bulging with change.  Every time someone gave him money his sweet, high voiced piped up above the crowds, and Jet could hear his thank-you.

            "God bless us, every one."  Jet settled one hand on his well-concealed pistol.

            "That's just pushing it.  I cannot wait to nail this bastard."  Faye adjusted her own gun in her waistband.

            "Then let's get to it, so we can get out of this awful place."  

            "Merry Christmas!  God bless!" chirped Tan as an elderly woman passed him what looked to Jet to be at least fifty woolong.  Faye and Jet grinned at each other as they began moving through the crowd.               


	4. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

I'll be home for Christmas 

_You can count on me_

_Please have snow and mistletoe_

And presents on the tree 

            With the way his day had been going, Spike wasn't surprised in the least that Hans Claus's fence operation was located in a toy shop.  It was an old, dingy toy shop filled to the brim with train sets, dolls with movable eyes, one eye or no eyes at all, and bears.  There must have been two hundred teddy bears staring at Spike from a wall of shelves.  Strung over the musty mess were cheap tinsel garlands.  "Wonder where he keeps the severed heads," Spike muttered as he stood in the center of the bleak little room. 

            "Well well well!" boomed a hearty voice from the rear.  "Merry Christmas to you, young man!  How may I assist you?"  

            Hans Claus had the belly for Santa, but his gray hair was greasy and his beard was wet from something.  It smelled like schnapps.  He was wearing dirty tomato red corduroy pants and a stretched, stained wife-beater.  

            "I'm looking for a Santa," said Spike.  It just popped out.  Claus didn't seem fazed in the least.

            "Well, you found him!"  He swayed from left to right and leaned on the counter.  "What do you want for Christmas, little boy?"  Spike's nose twitched in response to Santa's odor.

            "I want to know something."  Claus's bleary eyes shifted to something behind the counter and then back to Spike.  Spike casually slipped the button on his trench coat, inside which his pistol resided.  

            "Try me," said Claus.  

            "Timothy Tan," said Spike.  "He called you lately?"

            "Never heard of him," said Claus automatically.  

            "That's not what his sister told me," said Spike coolly.  

            Claus's fat hand dipped below the counter.  Spike's pistol came out of his jacket.  "Don't do it."  Claus sighed and held up his hands.  One held a nearly empty schnapps bottle.

            "Relax, bounty boy.  I ain't gonna shoot you up."  He took a swig.  "Not yet, anyway."  Spike lowered his gun.

            "What do you know?"  Claus came around the counter and sat on it.  Both the counter and the fastener on his pants creaked.

            "I ain't heard from that little fuck in six months.  What do you want from me?"  Spike holstered the pistol.

            "Maybe just that.  You don't know if he's on Ganymeade?"  

            "He ain't here," said Claus.  "If he was, he woulda commed me, let me know when he was bringing his stuff in.  The shit he gives me ain't easy to pass, and I gotta make arrangements previous.  You know?"

            "Yeah," said Spike.  "Thanks."

            "No freakin' problem," said Claus.  "You want a drink?"

            "Maybe some other time," said Spike, mentally adding _in my next lifetime_.  "Later," he added aloud as he headed for the door.  His comm rang. 

            "Spike."  It was Jet.  He sounded like he was whispering.  

            "What's up?" Spike asked.  

            "Faye and I just got a bead on Tan.  Ganymeade Retail Complex.  Get your ass moving and help us out."  

            "Tan's here?" Spike asked, confused.  "But Claus said…"

            He spun just in time to avoid a bullet from a very old Luger Claus had discovered in his waistband.  "Shit!"  Spike dove out the door and pressed himself against the wall under the shop window, which shattered on him from another bullet.  "I knew that was too easy," Spike muttered.  He turned and fired into the store.  Doll's porcelain heads shattered and teddy bear stuffing filled the air.  Claus, however, rolled himself over the counter and disappeared under cover.  The firefight went on until most of the toys in the store had been destroyed.  Claus was a bad shot, but he had Spike pinned down.  

            A shot zinged over his head and planted itself in a parked car across the street.  Spike was counting in his head.  _Seven.  _He fired back with his own pistol, shattering something else in the shop.  Claus's last shot came too close for comfort.  Spike felt a stinging in his head, and saw some blackish-green hair speckle the dirty snow beside him.  _Eight._  Spike spun, stood and pulled the trigger in one ballet-like move.  There was a wet _thlunk_, and Claus toppled backwards with a bullet between his eyes.  Spike sighed and felt his head.  A chunk of hair and flesh had been gouged from the top, leaving a wide, 19th-century style part in his hair.  He grimaced.  "Great."

            "Spike!"  His comm was resting on the shop floor just inside the entrance, miraculously unharmed.  Jet's voice sounded like an excited chipmunk's.  "Spike!  What the hell's goin' on over there?!"  Spike picked up the comm and looked at the shot-up toy store and the dead fence wearily.  

            "I just shot Santa."

            Jet had stopped to call Spike, but Faye was fixated on Tan.  She hitched her sweater over her Glock as she closed in on him, and then pasted a smile on her face, a smile like the ones she'd been observing all day.  Vacant, vapid, totally satiated by the mindless spending of money.  Tan saw her and immediately stretched out his hand.  Faye smiled wider.  _Joke's on you this time, sucker_.  "Please ma'am, could you spare some coins?"  Faye had a hard time not laughing in his face.  The guy was even sporting a phony British accent.  

            "Suuure," purred Faye.  "Just let me get my wallet, little boy."  She reached behind her for the gun.  Tan's eyes widened with what Faye believed was genuine surprise when he saw it.  

            "Bounty hunter…"  He cursed.  "Shit."  

            "That's right," said Faye.  "Now I don't wanna make a scene, _Timothy_, so why don't you hop out of that chair and we'll go see the nice ISSP agents so they can give me my Christmas present."  A smile flickered on Tan's face.  The surprise had vanished, and so had the sweet, childish expression he wore while begging.  He was small, and he looked like a kid, but Faye knew a veteran grifter when she saw one, and Tan's eyes gave him away.  They had the bright flicker of life that sized up everyone and everything around him, Faye included.  

            "Who tipped you off?  My sister?"  Faye smiled.

            "Yes.  Yes she did.  Now let's get a move on here.  Mall security is starting to give me the eye."  Tan nodded slowly, and then stood, his overcoat falling open.  Faye gasped when she got a view of the submachine pistol he was holding.  

            "I knew she'd give me up sooner or later," said Tan.  "So now it all comes down to a question of muzzle velocity."  He gestured at Faye's gun.  "Glock 9mm, right?"  Faye nodded tightly, her finger moving towards the trigger.  "Nice gun, reliable," said Tan.  "But this…this is a Uzi.  It can fire three bullets to your one."  He shrugged.  "It's really up to you.  You can try to take me out here, maybe with a leg shot.  But I might shoot back, and who knows.  This gun has a big kick.  I might miss you and hit someone else.  You know.  A kid or something."  

            Faye growled under her breath.  "You know, for a minute there I actually forgot you're a cold bastard."  Tan smiled wide.

            "Bad mistake…what's your name?"  Faye, seething, had to put up her gun.

            "Does it matter?"  Tan considered.

            "No."  He shoved his wheelchair at Faye, hard.  It was heavy, and it knocked her backwards into a fat shopper, who jumped out of the way and let Faye smack her head against the fake marble tiles of the mall floor, hard.  Tan leapt nimbly over her body and took off through the crowd.  Faye screamed at the top of her lungs, hoping the lunkhead would hear her.

            "_JET!_"  Jet snapped his head around and saw the fleeing Tan.  

            "Got him!" he yelled, giving chase.  Jet was a big man, he knew.  He also knew that when he needed to move, there wasn't much in this universe that could stop him.  He barreled into the crowd, shoving, pushing, elbowing and sometimes literally throwing people out of the way.  Tan had no such problems.  He went between the legs, wound around between people's shopping bags, and reached the escalator before Jet.  Unfortunately it was the 'down' escalator, and that allowed Jet to catch up.  

            In the one place where his long legs gave him an advantage, Jet bounded up the escalator after Tan, ignoring the hapless bodies he sent over the rail.  He yanked out his pistol and bellowed, "Stop!"  Jet was able to yell 'stop' in such a way that usually make punks screech to a halt and piss their pants, but Tan was unfazed.  He reached the mezzanine on the second level of the mall, and was about to bolt for freedom when his long coat caught in the top of the escalator and sent him sprawling.  Jet, coming up the steps at full steam, landed on top of him.  Tan's jacket ripped free under his weight and sent them both sliding across the slick floor, the edge of the level zooming up in Jet's vision.  He grabbed Tan with one hand and the mezzanine rail with the other.  Tan shot off the edge of the balcony, but Jet's grip held.  Tiny Tim's pistol fell into the heaving masses below, and he thrashed wildly as Jet held him suspended over the crowd, thinking that he was definitely too old for this shit.      


	5. Frosty the Snow Man

Jingle bells, Batman smells Robin laid an egg 

**_The Batmobile, it lost a wheel_**

**_And the Joker got away_**

****

            When Faye and Jet reached the ISSP precinct office near the mall with a handcuffed Tan, they found a long, colorful line of crooks already waiting for admittance.  Faye thought she recognized a few shoppers from their stakeout.  "Oh come on," said Tan.  "Are you gonna make me wait in this line?"

            "No," said Jet as he shoved his way up to the desk sergeant.  "You get the VIP treatment."  Tan rolled his eyes as Faye urged him along.

            "Lucky me."  He turned to Faye.  "Hey, doll, I can walk you know.  I don't need any additional thrust from you."  Faye rapped his head with her knuckles.  It was so gratifying to have a short bounty that she could push around for once.  

            "Shut up, freak."  Tan laughed.  

            "Freak?  Oh, that's funny coming from a woman in a Santa sweater who packs heat."  

            "Timothy Tan?" demanded the bored desk sergeant, looking over the counter from his perch.  "Gotta hand it to you, Jet.  You sure do pull in the weirdoes."  Jet shrugged modestly.

            "Just a talent, I guess."  The sergeant picked up his hardwired comm.  "I gotta call upstairs to Accounts Payable and get an okay on your bounty.  Wait over there for a second, will ya?"  He pointed to a row of benches.  

            "What about the littlest con artist?" asked Faye.

            "I'll have a uniform take him to the holding cells," said the sergeant.  He put his hand over the phone and bellowed, "HEY FRED!"  A young rookie officer who had been wrestling with two drunken Santa elves hurried over.  

            "Christ, more midgets?" he demanded.  

            "This here ain't just any midget, this is Tiny Tim himself," said the sergeant.  "Take him down to B block, would you?"  Fred relieved Faye of Tan.  

            "Wow.  Never thought I'd get to see him."

            "Well take a nice long look, Junior," snarled Tan sarcastically.  "In fact, I'll be posing for pictures until five o'clock."  Jet rubbed his bald spot wearily.  

            "Get him out of here, will you?"

            "Sure thing," said Fred, adding with bright-eyed excitement, "Hey, you're Jet Black!  It's an—"  

            "Yo, gumshoe," said Tan.  "Think we could move this along some time today?"  Fred, still basking in the glow of his double celebrity encounter, escorted Tiny Tim towards the holding cells.  

            "Have fun in prison!  Maybe if you're good Santa will send you a nail file!" Faye called after him.  Tan turned and grinned.  

            "No need for that, doll.  But I wouldn't mind fifteen minutes alone with you."  Jet had to manually restrain Faye from leaping the counter and committing what would appear to most to be assault on a minor.  

            "What did he do, try to nurse?" asked Spike's voice from behind her.  Faye turned on him.

            "Oh you're hilarious, Spike."  She looked at him more closely.  "What the hell happened to your head?"  Spike gave her the Look.  He didn't use the Look very often, but now it perfectly expressed his disgust, fatigue, and general disbelief of the situation he had landed in.  

            "I'm trying out a new style for the holidays."

            "It sucks," Faye declared.

            "Thanks for your opinion," said Spike, sinking down on a convenient bench like a deflated scarecrow.  

            "Rough day?" said Jet.  

            "I killed Santa," said Spike morosely.  "How would you feel?"  Jet decided there was nothing he could possibly say to that, and before he could try his attention was caught by the Santa elves, who had ceased to sing a horribly off-key version of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' and decided to try to kill each other with the scraps of holiday decorations that the ISSP officers had put up around the waiting room.  One was wielding a plastic candy cane and the other had a faux-evergreen wreath and was putting up a pretty good fight.  The other criminals instantly formed a circle and began to cheer.  A man who had been busted for soliciting a fake charity outside the mall started taking bets.  All of the uniforms in the room including star-struck Fred jumped into the fray and tried to separate the two determined little people.  Jet sighed, and turned his back.

            "Yo Jet," called the desk sergeant.  "They're bringin' down your payment…how you want it split up?"  

            "Four ways, one ten percent and the rest equal," Jet replied.

            "Hey," said Faye suddenly.  "Where's Tan?"  Jet whipped his head around in a quick sweep and failed to locate the conman.  

            "Oh fuck it."  

            "He's over there," said Spike calmly, pointing to another bench, which was in danger of being engulfed by the fight.  Tan was standing on it, trying to maintain balance with his handcuffed hands.  

            "You know, if we could get him into the brawl we'd have ourselves a pay-per-view event," grumbled the desk sergeant as he left his post and ambled over to the clot of miscreants.  "Okay, lunkheads!  That's enough!  The Christmas décor is not to be used as lethal weapons!  Read the sign!"  No one paid him any attention except Tan, who grabbed the sergeant's key ring expertly with the toe of his shoe, flipped it in the air and caught it by the handcuff key.  He slipped his bonds before anyone, including Spike had a chance to do anything but think, _Jesus, he's fast_.  Hands free, Tan grabbed the sergeant's pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling.

            Two hookers dressed like naughty Mrs. Clauses screamed and dove to the floor.  Everyone else froze in their spot, including the drunken Santa's helpers, one of who was paused in the middle of strangling the other with his candy cane.  

            "Alright," said Tan calmly.  "Here's how it's going to work."  Spike drew his pistol and aimed at Tan's head.  

            "You're gonna put the gun down and go to your room like a good little boy."  Tan smiled slightly.  

            "So you're the real brains, huh?  I knew the chick and the old guy couldn't be."  

            "I'm thirty-seven, you little rat bastard…" Jet started.  Tan turned and pulled the trigger of his gun once.  Fred the cop fell with a red, bloody hole in the front of his uniform.

            "Here's how it's going to work," said Tan once again.  "_You're_ going to put the pistol down nice and easy, or I'll shoot someone else.  You try any kung-fu, booby-traps or any of that other flashy shit and I'll shoot everyone I can."  He checked his clip.  "Full, minus one.  Fourteen shots.  And you know I'm fast."  He turned to Spike and the group, still aiming.  The rest of the population of the waiting room ducked as the barrel of the gun swept over their heads.  Spike didn't flinch as it came to rest on him.  "So here's your choice," said Tan.  "You drop the gat, I take my leave, you live and have enough time to call the paramedics for the dumb blue line over there.  You want to stand here like a cowboy and reenact the last scene from _Fistful of Dollars_, fine by me.  He'll die, but I've got all night."  Spike shrugged and dropped his gun.

            "Where do you plan to go, Tan?  There's a lot more besides us after you."  Tan shrugged.

            "My little secret.  You'll understand."  He jumped as a door from the innards of the station opened and whipped his gun around to cover a small man with glasses who was entering the room.  The man screamed.  Tan pulled back the hammer.

            "Who the hell are you—make it fast, and you better not be a cop."  

            "I'm Arnold Pless!" said the man, putting his hands up.  One was holding a blue Inter-System Bank book.  Spike groaned inwardly as he recognized what it was.

            "And you do…?" said Tan in a voice that let Pless know it better be the right answer.

            "I'm an accountant!  That's all!  I was just bringing out a bounty to pay to some folks…"  It belatedly dawned on Pless what was going on.  "Oh dear.  Oh crap."  Tan jerked his gun once.

            "Bring it here."  Pless, knees knocking, came forward.

            "Please don't kill me, please please please, I have a wife and a family and two dogs and I own a Lexus and it's not paid for…"

            "I could care less about you, you dumb shit," said Tan.  "Get out of here."  He opened the bankbook and looked and the credit chips inside.

            "200 million woolong?  Wow.  Had no clue I was worth that much."  

            "He can't take our money!" Faye screamed as she started for him.  

            "Whoa, Bessie," said Tan.  "Just because I got the cash doesn't mean I won't still shoot your ass."  Spike put a hand on Faye's shoulder.  It rested heavily.  It let her know that if she moved she'd likely die.  Faye forced herself to relax, but it didn't do anything for the seething rage.  

            Tan hopped off his bench and skipped merrily to the door.  Actually skipped.  The _Bebop _crew fought a collective urge to dogpile on the little runt and beat the shit out of him.  At the door, Tan paused and turned, the cold wind of the Ganymeade night blowing his coat around him like some sort of Old West bank robber.  "That's all, folks!" he caroled.  "Merry Christmas to all, and too all a good night!"              


	6. Silent Night

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas 

**_Just like the ones I used to know_**

**_Where the treetops glistened and children listened_**

**_To hear sleigh bells in the snow_**

****

            Edward could tell her companions had had a bad day the second they stepped into the _Bebop_'s lounge.  Jet-person's ugly suit had black streaks down the front like he'd been break dancing.  Faye-Faye just looked royally pissed, which wasn't unusual for Faye-Faye, but she had that gleam in her eye and the spring in her walk that meant she was Really Mad For Real.  Ed almost laughed when she saw Spike's head, but decided against it when he flopped on the couch and let out an almost pathetic moan.  Ein came scampering over and hopped in his lap.  Spike didn't push him off; he just sort of slumped over and moaned again.  Edward cautiously climbed on the couch on his other side and rested her chin on his shoulder.  "Spikey is not having a happy holiday?"  

            Faye flung something heavy against the wall of the ship and made a loud noise.  "I cannot believe that little _FUCK _stole our _BOUNTY!_"  She swept her arm across the coffee table, sending the TV and Tomato to the floor.  Ed wasn't worried about Tomato—she was tough—but the TV made an unpleasant breaking sound when it hit the deck.  

            "KNOCK IT OFF!" Jet bellowed in his don't-fuck-with-me-tone.  He sat heavily in the small chair.  "Look.  I know it's been a bad day for all of us…"  

            "That's all you can say?!" Faye screeched.  "A _BAD DAY_?!"  Jet slammed his hand on the table.  

            "Faye, I am at the point where I am going to shoot you if you open that mouth of yours one more time tonight.  Capice?"  Faye pouted, but sat down, crowding onto the couch with Spike, Ed and Ein.  Spike just grunted.  He didn't even move.  

            Ed traced the bald patch along the top of his head.  "Spikey should sue his hairdresser."  

            "I hate my life," said Spike, putting his head in his hands.  

            "Well, he's useless," said Jet.  "And Faye's gone over the edge."  Faye didn't disagree.  Jet turned to his youngest crew member.  "Looks like it's just you and me, Ed.  Feel like doing Jet a favor?"  Ed nodded happily, glad that one person on the ship hadn't flipped out on her.   

            "How can Edward be of service, Jet-person?" she said eagerly, doing a forward roll off the sofa and landing in front of her laptop.

            "I want you to pull Timothy Tan's bank records," said Jet.  "He handles a lot of dough, and he just stole a shitload from us, and he's gotta put it somewhere."  Ed stuck out her tongue and then started to type furiously.  

            "Smart smart," she agreed.  

            "I don't know where he thinks he's gonna _go _with _our _money," Faye suddenly spoke up.  "Every bounty hunter in the galaxy is still after him, and he knows he can't run to his sister anymore."  Spike swiveled his head to Faye.

            "What do you mean he knows?"  Faye returned his look as if he were obviously stupid.  

            "Because I told him, numbnuts."  Spike jumped to his feet.

            "How stupid could you be?!" he yelled at Faye.  Ed and Jet looked up at him.  Spike didn't yell.  When he yelled, things got serious.  Faye, ignoring this fact, looked to Jet.

            "What's with him?"  

            "If Tan knows his sister gave him up," said Jet with infinite patience that was about to give way to shouting and several undignified suggestions about what Faye could do to herself, "he's probably on his way to go kill her before she can tell any more bounty hunters his life story."  Faye bit her lip.

            "Oh.  I guess that makes sense."  A cold wind blew through the lounge as Spike banged the door open and disappeared into the snowy night.  

            "Hey!" Jet shouted after him, almost automatically.  It didn't do any good—not that it ever had before.  The Swordfish roared to life outside and the errant space cowboy was gone.  

            "Edward has found something!" Ed announced loudly.  "Faye-Faye and Jet need to look right now!"  Jet leaned over her shoulder.  

            "Oh, Jesus," he said.  He turned to Faye.

            "Go get Spike."  Faye put her hands on her hips.  

            "I'm not going after that idiot…"

            "NOW!" said Jet.  Faye frowned.

            "What's the matter?"  Jet flipped the laptop around and showed her.  

            "Oh boy," she said.  

            "Bad.  Very bad," agreed Ed.

            "I'll notify the ISSP.  You go get Spike," said Jet, running for the comm.  Faye grabbed her Glock and an extra clip and followed Spike's suit into the dark night lit only by distant Christmas lights.

            Margaret Tan's building was mostly dark when Spike set the Swordfish down in the street.  Snow was blowing fast, diagonally in front of his lights, and it cut into his face when he jumped out of the ship and ran across the slick sidewalk to the apartment's vestibule.  His mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour, most of his thoughts nowhere near coherent.  Margaret was in danger.  Margaret who looked like Julia.  Who smelled and spoke and acted like Julia.  Margaret might die.  

            Spike didn't think he could handle that.

            He depressed the buzzer and held it down until Margaret's sleepy voice came over the speaker.  "What?" she said.  "This better not be Bob from the third forgetting his keys again."

            "It's Spike," said Spike shortly.  "Let me in."  

            "Do you realize what time it is?" said Margaret, immediately sounding awake and more snappish.  "Even I'm not that desperate for the money."

            "This isn't about the bounty," said Spike.  "Your brother escaped earlier tonight.  He knows you turned him in.  Let me up.  Please."  Spike was begging, and he didn't like the fact that this woman reduced him to it so easily.  But one thought of that blond hair spread over a halo of blood was enough to make him forget everything.  

            "Tim is coming here?" said Margaret.  As easily as she was irritated, she was now afraid.  

            "I'm pretty sure," said Spike.  He was gratified by the inner door swinging open to the discordant tone of the buzzer.  

            Spike took the stairs two at a time, eschewing the suspiciously creaky elevator for the power of his own long legs.  He reached Margaret's floor wheezing for breath, but sped down the hallway to her door and pounded on it.  Margaret opened it before his second knock could descend.  She was fully clothed and she had an all-too-familiar expression to Spike of confused anger mixed with fear.

            "This was not smooth, Spiegel," she said.  "This is not the way I planned for things to go."  Spike moved around her and cast a quick glance at the open area of her apartment.  There was nothing.  He let out his breath.  

            "Neither did I."  

            "So now what am I supposed to do?" asked Margaret.  "Because mark my words, Tim is not just going to blindly wander over here and take a shot at me.  If he was smart enough to get away from you he's not gonna get caught again."  She slumped in the overstuffed chair and wrapped her arms around herself.

            "Boy did I make a mistake with you people."  Spike wanted more than anything to go over, kneel and add his own arms to hers.  Instead he just stood rather helplessly in the center of the room, his hands at his sides.

            "I'm sorry."  

            "Yeah.  You're sorry, I'm sorry, everybody's sorry," said Margaret with sudden venom.  "But you're not as sorry as you're going to be, Spike."  

            The floor dropped out from under Spike's feet as he saw Margaret Tan's arms unfold to reveal she was holding a gun.  It was a revolver, and old one, heavily oiled and polished to a high shine.  In Margaret's dim apartment, it gleamed.  Spike spoke the only word he could think of.  

            "Why?"  It was much more than the simple question, but Margaret didn't know that.  She stood up, shaking her head at Spike.

            "Why?  You know, that's a really good question, Spike."  She extended her arm and pulled back the hammer on the revolver.  "You know what I got for Christmas last year?  You know what my doctor called me from his home to tell me on Christmas day?"  Spike was silent.  If the truth be told, he wasn't even in the room.  In body maybe, but his mind was a million miles and a few light-years away.  "I have cancer," said Margaret.  "Me.  The girl who never smoked a day in her life, the girl who doesn't even eat red meat, for chrissake."  A tear slipped down her cheek.  "Prognosis: two months to live.  So I decided I better tie up my life's loose ends."  

            "And that," said Timothy Tan as he stepped out of the bathroom, "included me."  He still had the pistol he'd taken from the ISSP office.  Spike numbly turned to look at him.  

            "Setup," he said, more to himself than as a question.  And so it always was, just when his life couldn't get any more nightmarish than it seemed to be at that moment.  A wormhole opened, and a new dimension in pain was discovered.  _I'm just watching a bad dream I never wake up from_.  

            "You can imagine how surprised I was to hear from my baby sister," said Tan, "especially when she called to tell me she only had a little time to live."  He smiled.  Spike could care less about his expository rambling.  He wasn't even there.  He was just observing, casually.  From the outside.  _Julia…_

            "Of course, I wouldn't let my blood down just like that," said Tan.  "There's one doctor on Mars who has a special gene-therapy treatment for malignant, metastasized cancer like Meg's."  

            "Millions and millions of woolong every time," said Margaret.  "But he got the money.  He always did."  She was shaking.  "And this was my last treatment.  This _is_ my last treatment!" she cried as more tears slipped out of those eyes, pools of brown instead of blue but drowning pools all the same.  "It's my Christmas.  You'd deny a dying girl her life.  What kind of a sick, sick bastard are you?"

            "It's blood money," said Spike calmly.  "Others have died so you can live."  It wasn't an argument.  It was just something to say.  A fact he felt like pointing out.  He didn't care.  He just felt numb.  

            "Jesus died for our sins, and we celebrate his birthday in return," said Tan.  "So a few more people had to die for mine.  So what?"  He also leveled his gun at Spike.  "You, unlike those pathetic schmucks I scam, I won't even pretend to be sorry over.  Not at all."  Margaret wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand.  

            "I really did make a mistake with you, Spiegel.  You were way too smart."  

            There were gunshots.  They shone brighter than the Christmas lights that illuminated Ganymede like an iridescent jewel in a vast, unforgiving sea.              


	7. Christmas Reverie

I'll have a blue Christmas, that's certain   
And when that blue heartache starts hurtin'   
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white,   
But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas

****

            If Spike had had his way, he wouldn't have moved when Margaret and Timothy Tan started shooting at him.  He figured it would have been as fitting an end as any.  Hadn't the first time occurred almost exactly like this?  The full-circle effect seemed to fit.  

            But his reflexes took over and propelled him over the back of the universe's ugliest armchair and folded his frame behind it as bullets thunked into the front and stuffing rained down on Spike like snow.  A piece landed on the end of his nose, and he sneezed.  

            Maybe this wasn't so bad.  The chair was being destroyed even as Margaret stopped to reload.  Soon a bullet would rip through the fabric and wood and into his back.  At this point, at this time of the year, at this moment in his life, Spike knew he would welcome it.  

            In the Redtail, Faye was cursing Spike out with every word and phrase she knew, plus a few that spontaneously popped into her mind.  Why did she have to be the one to go get the stupid lunkhead every time he decided to be a knight in shining freaking armor?  Why did she have to be the one to get caught in his little obsessions and psychological abysses?  Why her?  What had she done to deserve this?  

            As the zipcraft swooped low over Margaret's apartment building, Faye saw a window on a high floor lit with what looked like the blue flashes of a strobe light.  Faye knew different.  It was gunfire, and in the flashes she could see two figures standing with arms extended and one with his skinny frame curled like a folded skeleton behind some sort of cover.

            Faye cursed again.  It was so like the moron to walk into a trap.  In fact, it was _just_ like him.  If he didn't walk into traps so willingly though, Faye would probably be dead a few times over.  So she did the only thing she could, knowing that if the situation had been reduced to the midget and his sister using Spike for a moving target a stealthy intervention was out of the question.  

            Faye aimed the Redtail at Margaret Tan's window and planted the ship in the middle of it.  Of course, the Redtail was a lot bigger than the window and took a lot of the wall out too, but by the way Tan and his sister jumped backwards with expressions of terror on their faces, Faye thought it probably had the desired effect.

            Spike was surprised, but somehow relieved when Faye crashed her zipcraft through the wall of Margaret Tan's apartment.  It took away the dilemma he was facing—whether to stay crouched behind cover like some kind of suicidal yet cowardly scarecrow, or stand up and actually start shooting back.  Spike didn't want to shoot at Margaret.  Spike didn't know if he _could_ shoot her.  That bothered him, in the back of his mind that was all about Spike, but he ignored it.  

            Faye leapt from the cockpit with her Glock drawn and fired at the retreating backs of the newly inaugurated brother/sister act.  "What the hell is wrong with you?!" she managed to screech at Spike as she gave chase.  Spike considered the question.  He thought he knew the answer, too.  He couldn't shoot at Margaret.  Julia.  _Margaret_, he said firmly to himself.  Whatever she was named, it would be like killing her all over again.  Spike didn't have as many hang-ups as everyone thought, but he did have this one, and it was a bad weakness in this situation.  He was the first to admit that.  

            Then he realized he was still sitting cross-legged on the floor of Margaret Tan's apartment, and he could hear gunfire being exchanged above him, probably on the roof.  He had left Faye in a two-against-one situation, which normally wouldn't have bothered him, but he knew that Tan was fast, dangerous and an extremely good shot.  Faye, while also fast and dangerous when you threatened her money or her food supply, was a good shot as well.  But not as good as Tan.  And not against two Tans either.  

            Spike stood swiftly and drew both of his guns, the one in his overcoat and the one he kept at the small of his back for a surprise.  His legs carried him out Margaret's door and up the stairs through a door marked ROOF ACCESS.  He burst out into the windy, snow-blowing night and almost smashed into Faye, who was crouched behind the metal stairwell door.  She fired at the two shapes across the roof until her Glock clicked empty.  

            "Shit!" she swore.  "I'm out."  Spike leaned around the door and assessed the situation.  He smiled as he saw that for once, Timothy Tan had screwed up.  There was no ship waiting for them on the roof, no backup ride being called over the comm.  Tan was relying on shooting down the two bounty hunters and making his escape through the street.  Spike grimly returned fire as the con man shot at his exposed and already abused head.  Margaret was one story, but he would be damned if he let this little prick get away again.  Faye snatched his second pistol and also began to fire.  

            Spike's gun clicked empty, and he pulled back to change the clip.  Not far enough, as a searing pain suddenly went through his left shoulder.  Spike cried out and toppled forward as the .45 revolver round tore a chunk of flesh and muscle out of him.  He hit the snow sideways, wondering why it was always the left shoulder that took the punishment.  Didn't bad guys ever try for symmetry?  

            Margaret Tan advanced on the now exposed bounty hunter and leveled her pistol at his head.  "Drop the gun, miss, or I'll shoot him."  

            "Fuck," Faye muttered, glaring at Margaret Tan in such a way that Spike wondered why she didn't melt.  But she dropped the pistol.  It made almost no sound in the wet snow.  Timothy came to stand next to his sister, reaching up to pat her on the shoulder.

            "Nice shot, Meggers.  Really.  I'm impressed."  He reached into his overcoat and handed her the bankbook containing the bounty.  "I'll mop up here, okay?  You go on and call us a shuttle to the spaceport." 

            "No!" said Margaret suddenly.  She gripped the pistol in both hands and spread her legs, taking a textbook firing stance against Spike.  "He tried to take my Christmas," she said, her voice quivering with rage.  "I want him."  Timothy stepped back, nodding as if he understood.  

            Spike realized he was lying on his fully loaded gun.  He looked up at Margaret and saw her finger curl around the trigger.  It would be so easy to roll and shoot.  He was faster than her.  Just flop over half a foot, lift your arm and pull a tiny metal lever.

He didn't do it.  He had known he wouldn't from the time he realized he was still armed.  He didn't.  He wouldn't.  He couldn't.  He didn't particularly care.

"I hope you roast in Hell," said Margaret Tan.  "Merry Christmas, Spike."  

            Spike closed his eyes, and thought of Julia.

            The shot echoed across the roof and Spike snapped his eyes open reflexively.  Margaret was still standing, immobile.  A trickle of red ran between her eyes, sprung from a tiny wellspring in her forehead.  Spike became aware of a pair of stocking-clad legs standing behind him, and the absence of his pistol.  

            "Yeah," said Faye as Margaret Tan toppled over.  "Merry Christmas, bitch."

            Spike didn't move.  He just lay in the snow, ignoring the fact that he was becoming numb.  He was already numb as he watched blood run and spread in a halo around golden hair.  She was dead.  She was shot dead.  She was…

            "MEG!" Timothy Tan screamed.  He raised his gun at Faye, who was still standing, slightly surprised she'd actually managed to shoot the wench.  "I'll fucking kill you!" Tan bellowed.  

            "This is the ISSP!" another voice blared, this time from a hovercraft that swooped over the roof.  "Drop your weapons and put your hands behind your head."  Faye complied.  Tan looked at the craft, enraged.  His expression turned to fear, then desperation as six more ISSP SWAT vehicles surrounded the roof, their lights and noise filling the night and chasing away the darkness and snow.  

            The tableau the ISSP officers saw as they rappelled down to the rooftop from their hovercraft was an odd one of a scantily dressed babe standing over a tall skinny guy who was leaking a lot of blood into the snow.  They saw another, blonde woman also sprawled out on her back with an ugly bullet hole in her head.  And they saw Timothy Tan, highest-bountied con man in the galaxy, drop his gun, fall to his knees and cry like a baby as he was taken into custody.


	8. Epilogue: Christmas In July

Oh, we'll have a Christmas , a summer Christmas  
We'll have one fine fun-time unwinding  
In the sunshine Christmas  
Oh, we'll spend yuletide, down by the poolside  
This year let's have Christmas in July

****

            Jet normally despised people who sat around during the holidays or any other time of leisure grunting with satisfaction and remarking _this is the life_.  It made them sound lazy and damn stupid.  But he had to admit, sitting on a beach chair as the sun beat down on him, drinking an umbrella drink he could actually afford, that this was indeed the life.  

            On the next chair, Spike was sipping his unimaginative double scotch on the rocks, but it was good scotch and he seemed happy.  Jet saw he'd traded in the suit for baggy shorts and a loud, extremely red Hawaiian shirt decorated with Christmas palm trees.  Jet was not the only one to notice this.

            "Nice threads, cowboy," said Faye as she sat on the arm of his chair with a Mai Tai.  "You auditioning to be the next Jimmy Buffet, perhaps?"  Spike grunted from behind his shades.  It might have been a "bite me".  Faye turned to Jet with a winning smile and leaned across Spike so far she almost fell out of her teeny bikini.  "Jet…"

            "No," said Jet automatically.  

            "But I just want a couple hundred for my bar tab!" whined Faye.  Jet flicked down his own shades and gave her what he hoped was a stern, father-type look.

            "You used up your share of the bounty paying for your wanton property destruction and repairs to your ship.  It ain't my problem."  Faye turned to her other hope, although he was even less receptive to smiling and boobs.

            "Spike…?"

            "No," he said.  "Go away, Faye.  You're blocking my sun."  

            "Like it would make any difference to you, Pasty!" Faye snapped as she stormed off.  Spike sighed.

            "You okay?" Jet said on impulse.  It wasn't something he asked Spike.  Hell, it was something he'd never asked Spike.  But his partner had been even quieter than usual since the shootout on the rooftop, and Jet felt it was his duty to at least say something.

            "Sure," said Spike.  "We got our money, nice vacation in south Ganymede for the holiday, got away from all that horrible White Christmas bullshit…what's not to be okay with?"

            "I saw that girl, Margaret," said Jet.  "At the morgue."  He looked at Spike questioningly.  It was his best interrogation technique—make a statement that could be interpreted one way by an innocent person and another by a guilty and then just sit back and give them a look.  

            "I'm over it," said Spike shortly.  "But I've decided something."

            "What's that?" said Jet.  

            "Christmas," said Spike authoritatively, "is without a doubt the most masochistic, messed-up, sick, over-commercialized and emotionally manipulative part of the year, and I'm never getting mixed up in it again."  He stood and lit a cigarette.  

            "A wise man once said Christmas is what you make it," said Jet.  

            "Really?  Who?" said Spike bitterly.  

            "I dunno," said Jet with a shrug.  "I think I might have made it up."  A smile twitched on Spike's lips, then disappeared.

            "Well, this is what I make it.  So…merry Christmas, I guess."  Jet grunted.

            "Yeah.  Merry fuckin' Christmas."  Spike turned and walked off down the beach with his slow, hunched gait.  Jet sighed and leaned back in his chair.  Try as he might, not one of his crew was happy with their holiday.  

            "Jet-person!" Ed squealed excitedly, bounding up next to his chair and raining salt-water drops on him.  She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit covered with huge hibiscus flowers and swimming goggles in the place where her VR set usually rested.  Scratch that.  The insane one was happy.  

            "Hey, Ed," said Jet.  "I suppose it's too much to hope you're having a good time."

            "Ed is a fish!" Ed announced.  "If Ed does not go back to the sea soon Ed will suffocate and flop around like THIS!"  She fell to the ground and began to undulated her whole body.  Ein, also covered in sand and seawater, ran around her in circles barking.  Ed stopped suddenly and looked up at Jet.  "Would Jet person like to swim with us?!"  Jet looked down into his drink.  It was empty.  He pulled himself to his feet.

            "Sure, Ed.  Let's go have a Christmas swim."  

            "This is the best Christmas EVER in the history of _Bebop_!" shouted Ed as she rolled back down the beach to the water.  Jet smiled, a little, as he followed her by a more conventional walking route.  

            "I don't know about that, Ed.  But I think we did all right."

            Faye looked up as a skinny, pale hand plopped two hundred woolong on the bar next to her.  Spike spoke around the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, mostly ash by now.  "Merry Christmas."  The bartender brought Spike another double, no questions asked.  

            "So I take it I'm back in your good graces?"  Spike raised an eyebrow.

            "When were you ever _in _my good graces, Faye?"  Faye sighed and sucked impatiently on her new Mai Tai.

            "Cut it out for once, Spike.  Just drop that wounded act and tell me to my face.  You were angry because I shot Margaret Tan."  Spike shrugged.

            "No.  Not because you shot Margaret Tan."  Faye looked at him with dawning realization.

            "You're angry because you couldn't," she said softly.  Spike's face darkened as he drained his drink.

            "I don't know if I'm ever gonna get over this, Faye.  It's like scaling a 20-foot wall with a 10-foot ladder."  He looked at her.  "You know?"

            "Yeah," Faye said, because she did.  

            "You think?" Spike asked.  Faye absently ate a piece of fruit from her drink.

            "No, Spike.  I don't."  She didn't add what she always thought when Spike lapsed into one of his Julia moods.  _That woman is gonna be the death of you, is what I think_.  

            Spike slammed his hand on the bar.  "This is bullshit.  Christmas is the one time of the year when they arbitrarily tell you to be happy, and because the universe ISN'T happy and it never WILL be happy everyone gets all fucked up."  Faye laughed.

            "I think you just hit the nail on its proverbial flat head."  Spike sighed and put his head in his hands.

            "Hey man," he said to the bartender.  "Another round for me and my friend."  Faye held up her hand.

            "Not me.  I've had like six of these things and I think I'm beginning to bloat from the fruit juice."  Spike smiled lopsidedly at her.

            "Live a little, Faye.  It is Christmas, after all."  Faye sighed and motioned for another cornucopia drink.  

            "And what are the holidays good for if not getting drunk off your ass?"  Spike raised his tumbler briefly before gulping it down.  

            "I have no idea.  And I don't think I wanna know, either."  Faye also raised her glass before taking a swig.

            "I'll drink to that."

HAVE A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS, SPACE COWBOY… 

End notes: Songs used in chapter headings are (in order) 'Jingle Bell Rock', 'It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas', 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town', 'I'll Be Home for Christmas', a slightly modified version of 'Jingle Bells', 'White Christmas', 'Blue Christmas' and 'Christmas In July'.  Novel and poem excerpts used in dialogue are from _A Christmas Carol_ and _The Night Before Christmas_.  All printed material, songs and lyrics are the property of their respective creators and this author is making no profit.

End author's note: As I mentioned in the header notes, this story is possibly a prequel to a series of fics I've had bouncing around in my head loosely entitled 'Cowboy Bebop: The Lost Sessions'.  If you'd be interested in reading more of my Bebop ensemble pieces, PLEASE let me know in review.  Thanks to everyone who reviewed me.  I'll be back in the new year with a new story of some kind.  Happy holidays to all my readers, whatever holiday they may celebrate.     


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